This is the place to discuss the latest (as of January 2008) version of Apple's OS X operating system.68 responses total.
[There is already an OS X item; why not use that?]
[Yes, I posted that item; wanted a new one.]
OS X is derived from unix and hence inherits a lot of the unix gayisms. You can beautify the crap all you won't, it won't change the fact that at the core, it is still shit.
nihilist
I'm still running MacOS X 10.4 'Tiger' (on a borrowed iBook G3). Mostly I seem to use it as an X terminal, though I do run Camino locally. Anything of interest in 'Leopard'?
I'm using OS 10.4.11 on a MacBook Pro. The 10.5 install disk came with it, but I have not installed it: I fear a lot of apps I now use will not run on it, and I also read about bugs in 10.5. (I wish people didn't call OSs by names of animals: there are no similarities between the name and the OS.)
Tiger comes with several advances; one of the big ones (for me, anyway) is Timemachine. I really like automated backups.
That's a 10.5 app.
Re #6: heh, I was thinking the exact same thing :) and poor Cheetahs they kind of suck and are going extinct even..
resp:8 Ooops, my bad. And this is exactly why you are right and one should not name operating system releases after big cats.
I've been running Leopard (10.5) on my MacBook Pro since shortly after
it was released over a year ago. I will say that it had some rough
edges initially, but after the first couple of updates things got much
better; it's up to 10.5.6 now, runs quite smoothly, and I'm very happy
with it.
New features that I like:
Time Machine - automated incremental backups
Spaces - multiple desktops
Also, the Spotlight search facility is significantly improved from
Tiger. Much faster, better functionality. I use it a lot.
I've not had any problems with 3rd party apps not running.
I think Jim downgraded from 10.4 to 10.3 to make it run faster.
That's stupid and counterproductive.
Wouldn't that depend upon the machine?
I'd think it would depend on the machine and the uses to which it's put.
I think that opening oneself up to the security problems of an old, unmaintained version of the software is just plain silly.
re #16 - so you advocate always upgrading to bleeding edge? Or just 'common stable versions" ? Just curious.
What security problems? The computer came with 10.3 originally but he upgraded to 10.4 to try to run a later version of iPhoto which he decided he did not want to run. This was all taking up too much memory. We added some memory and it still ran slow. He reinstalled, this time without a lot of the unused junk (such as a driver for every printer ever made - some day he may print with it and add one driver then). I asked around about how to get rid of various stuff (drag to the trash can). iPhoto installed itself along with a bunch of other unwanted stuff the first time around. (Jim does not read well and missed the 'custom' part of installation). He is using the Mac only to play with photos. If he wants to write an email he asks me to do it, or look things up online. There are two places to add memory to the Mac, one of which requires taking it apart to some depth. We were given a printer with the Mac but it needs the inkwells refilled and then you need a $20 chipsetter to set them back to thinking they are full. We might borrow one and try printing some day. 6 cents/photo on State St. Someone with an ink refill shop asked us to try fixing three desktops and some laptops he has accumulated, in return for which he would probably reset the inkwells for us if we wanted. You can buy empty wells which are set to be 'always full' but then if they run dry you can damage the printhead.
resp:18 Look it up. The rest is a huge amount of irrelevant detail.
Re #19: don't be grumpy :) arr! <make way, make way, geek chick coming through :p tackles Sindi and sits on her> I've never used a Mac.. and I'm kind of not inclined to because of the cost/laziness involved; Intel 400Mhz 256MB RAM - would a OSX run on that? Would it be worthwhile using/learning how to use it for someone like me? Why are Remmers and Rane even using it - free?
Yeah, cross seems to be in grump mode lately. I'd be curious, too, to know what security problems one opens oneself up to on an old Mac that's not connected to the internet, although maybe this item, which is ostensibly about Leopard, isn't the place to discuss it. Security issues aside, I think it's kind of cool that folks can make some use out of old software/hardware. As to why I use the Mac - well, I buy my Macs, they're not free, so that's not the reason. I like Mac's because they're so well engineered and come with great software. More detail than that will have to wait until I'm feeling up to expositing at greater length. :)
The Mac does not crash. The hardware is also high quality. OS X lets you use BSD if you prefer, and even compile programs. OSX won't run on an Intel that i know of.
All current Macs use Intel processors. This has been true for a couple of years now. However, it is not easy to get OS X running on a non-Apple Intel machine. I think what "lets you use BSD" means is that OS X has a BSD variant (Darwin) built-in; running the Terminal application brings up a Unix shell (Bash by default).
This lets you bypass the gui stuff and type commands. Such as ssh.
I'm not grumpy; I'm just upset that no one has brought food under my bridge for me to eat lately.
I use MacOS X because I had a bad experience installing
NetBSD on a 300 MHz iBook G3, so I didn't want to beat my
head against the same procedure on the 900 MHz iBook G3 that
I was loaned.
MacOS X ships with the important things that I need to
connect to a NetBSD or Linux host and run applications
there: ssh and an X server. I also run a few X clients
locally on the Mac: xterm, xcalc etc.
No hassles. No virus problems. Elegant look and feel. Works as advertised. Four biggies for me.
Oh, I'm on OS 10.5.6. I wonder if you don't find common threads between the cars people buy and the flavor of their computers. I know I buy Honda Civics for the same "no hassles - as advertised" reasons.
I just don't buy cars.
Free curbside-find bikes, free small linux on curbside computers.
Manual gearbox, window winders, locks etc. estate
("station wagon"), carries more than you'd think. NetBSD
is analagous - everything's manual and it makes an efficient
work-horse.
Or install real Linux on them and help them out even more. Fixing people up with telnet screws them over.
Linux installed to hard drive has plenty of space for ssh (dbclient) and it is quite real. What I use is much faster than the commercial versions.
That's good!
I got Russian working with links browser (which is graphical with embedded images but uses console fonts). And Russian streaming audio. A 486 would be perfect for this but we don't have any left.
I don't have any 486 boxes either, but at least it's possible to build energy-efficient modern PCs now. Not sure whether any of those are reaching the curbside yet though.
humm. I run FreeBSD and drive a Jeep. Okay.
...Oh I get it. I like things for which there is a ton of free documentation on how to modify for my own use. :D
We measured energy use and a 486 beats a 386 or a pentium. The earliest pentiums were less energy efficient than slightly later ones. Faster cpus use more energy.
That's not always the case. Thankfully sanity prevailed at Intel and even AMD have some modern, fast chips that burn less power than predecessors.
Less than a 486?
Possibly. Have you looked at Intel Atom? For less than
$120 it's possible to buy a mainboard with an Atom processor
soldered to it and 2 Gbytes of RAM.
I can see that rescuing curbside 486 machines costs less
and keeps them from the landfill. RAM and disk capacity
limitations might be a drawback though.
This being the MacOS X Leopard item, I should probably
mention that one of the Darwin ports (I /think/ only Pure-
Darwin survives) might work on the Atom board. There are
several non-Darwin desktop BSDs and Linux of course as
alternatives.
Has anybody else upgraded to Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) yet? I did, the day it was released. Risky move, I know - did it for 10.5 but ended up going back to 10.4 (Tiger) until certain issues were resolved. But advance reviews indicated that Snow Leopard was largely glitch-free and involved mostly under-the-hood revisions, not user interface stuff, so I took a chance. Overall I'm really pleased with Snow Leopard. It takes up less disk than Leopard (saved me about 7 GB). The system boots faster - just over a minute, instead of the 2-3 minutes that Leopard took. Applications open and close faster - especially noticeable in the Mail app. Time Machine backups are faster. Although there are no radical changes to the user interface, there are some nice enhancements. For example, the the Airport drop-down menu displays signal strengths for the networks it can see. Also, when you open a dock folder in "grid" view, you can go to subfolders and stay in grid view (which should have been the case all along, of course). Snow Leopard runs only on Intel Macs, and so marks the end of Apple support for the Power PC architecture. For an exhaustive detailed review of Snow Leopard, see John Siracusa's writeup in Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2009/08/mac-os-x-10-6.ars
There is a Mac OS X item in micros cf (I mention this because I ask questions there but noone ever answers them, and I'd like others to hang out there too.) I've stayed with OS 10.4.11 having heard those bad things about 10.5. But I'd be a little worried about going to 10.6 because of the possibility of other apps I have not working in it.
I'll check out the Micros item. OS X 10.5 was a bit flaky when it first come out, but that was a couple of years ago. There have been several updates, and the current version is quite solid. With 10.5, Spotlight works pretty well, and you also get Time Machine, Apple's great incremental backup system. I wouldn't hesitate to upgrade to 10.5 at this point. However, if you have 3rd party software that's important to you, it's probably wise to check first that it runs under 10.5.
Your OS decreased in size and saved you 7GB? Woah.
Yep, 10.6 uses significantly less disk space than 10.5. That's the opposite of the way things usually go with an OS upgrade. Part of the savings is due to dropping Power PC support.
How big is 10.6?
(Way more than will fit onto a 3.5" floppy disk.)
It comes on a DVD with a capacity of 6.74 GB, of which 6.65 GB is actually used. It's hard to tell how that translates to actual hard disk storage once it's installed, though. Apple's official "Technical Requirements" page (http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html) specifies 1GB minimum memory and 5GB minimum disk space.
I'm still running 10.5 on a machine that came with it. I've been holding off on 10.6 until some of the inevitable bugs fixes come out. 10.6.1 is out now, but I'm still not particularly motivated to implement the change. I think that when I do go to 10.6, I'll first wipe my Time Machine drive and do a Carbon Copy Clone, and then start fresh with Time Machine after the upgrade. Aside from the speed, I should save a bunch of disk space on backups.
I did a Carbon Copy Clone of my 10.5 before upgrading, but didn't wipe Time Machine. Always anxious to be on the cutting edge, I've upgraded to 10.6.1. No differences that I can notice.
What is Time Machine?
Time Machine is an incremental backup system for OS X. Google os+x+time+machine for detailed info.
What do you back up other than personal data?
Time Machine backs up the entire system.
By the way, Snow Leopard is up to 10.6.4 now and extremely stable. I've been reading David Pogue's excellent book "Mac OS X Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual". In spite of the fact that I've been an OS X user for over six years, I've learned quite a bit from it. Keyboard shortcuts in particular. For instance, you get useful extra info about your wifi connection if you hold down the 'option' key when clicking on the Airport icon in the menu bar. Or notice what happens when you press 'option' when the Apple dropdown menu is visible. Clicking on a application in the dock while holding down 'option' or 'command' or 'option+command' also has useful effects. And there are key combinations for logging off, sleeping, restarting, or shutting down without confirmation, if you're in a hurry. Okay, so I'm a keyboard trivialist. But I find that keyboard shortcuts, once they become familiar, can really speed up my work.
Ctrl-Alt-Del does not seem to work on a Mac. OS 10.4 Ctrl-F2 down arrow to shutoff. Is there some keyboard way to bring up a pseudoterminal?
No default way that I'm aware of. If the OS version has Spotlight, you can probably hit command-space to invoke it, then type "terminal" followed by return to start the Terminal application. Once the Terminal application is open, you can select it via command-tab, then type command-N to open a new terminal window.
What is Spotlight and how would I know if OS 10.4 has it? Can I start a browser the same way?
OS 4 has spotlight - a search app. But you can put Terminal and browsers in the dock, and open them that way.
How do you access the 'dock' with the keyboard? I finally figured out that Ctrl-F2 gets you the menu and you can arrow down a few times to Shut Down. How do I access Spotlight with keyboard in the first place? Today I had a fight with OS 9. Can't find any telnet program so I download Nifty Telnet. In order to put on OS 10.3 we would have to disassemble the Bondi Blue G3 233MHz and find two 64MB PC66 SODIMMs. Anyone have extras? I don't want to use up our last two on a giveaway computer. 9.22 works with iCab 3 or IE 5 and they give up on a lot of javascript. 10.3 will work with Seamonkey 1.1, Firefox 2, iCab 4.8, Opera 9. 10.3 needs 128MB.
There is the Nifty Telnet-SSH client for OS-9.
That is what I downloaded (see #62). There is also a free virtual keyboard for OS 9 (not OS 10, which comes with one that is not as good), and I put it on a computer given to us with no keyboard, that went to kids for online games.
Re resp:62 - "How do you access the 'dock' with the keyboard?" Try Ctrl-F3. "How do I access Spotlight with keyboard...?" Cmd-Space. (The David Pogue book I mentioned above has answers to these questions and more, although it's specific to Snow Leopard, so there are a number of things in it that won't work on 10.4. An earlier edition specific to 10.4 probably exists.)
As of right now the AADL has two copies of Pogue's _Mac OS X, Tiger Edition: The Missing Manual_ available at the downtown branch. Here is a link: http://www.aadl.org/catalog/record/1243414 I've found Pogue's books to be a great help.
I presume I can set up my own keyboard shortcuts somehow, such as Ctrl-F4 to access a terminal window where I can type in the name of a program.
Apple is hosting a media event on Wednesday, October 20. Rumor has it that it's to announce the next version of OS X (10.7) and that it will be named "Lion". http://www.tuaw.com/2010/10/13/apple-media-event-on-october-20/
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